These five buildings have found a repurpose in life:
On the North Side, this building at 1540 North Main Street, built about 1913, yoostabe a police and waterworks substation. It was designed by Sanguinet and Staats and built on a corner of the Marine School grounds. The building was later a library, a DPS office, a Lions Club facility. It is now a restaurant.
Downtown, this 1900 building yoostabe Santa Fe Union Depot, serving passengers of Santa Fe and later Amtrak. It is now the banquet hall of Ashton Hotel.
On Vaughn Boulevard on the East Side, civic leader Samuel Selkirk Dillow (1866-1931) sold the city of Polytechnic the land on which to build this building in 1913. The building yoostabe Poly’s city hall and fire station before annexation in 1922. Later in life it was a health center and a bakery. Now idle, it is owned by TWU.
Two blocks west, on Rosedale Street the Subway sandwich shop yoostabe Ashburn’s ice cream shop.
Still on the East Side, every school day in the late 1950s I walked past this anonymous little red brick building on Collard Street—still unpaved then—on my way to D. McRae Elementary. The little building hunkers now unnoticed and unused, but once it hummed—literally—with purpose: Fort Worth Power & Light Company built it as an electricity substation in 1928. After Fort Worth Power & Light merged with Texas Electric Service Company, the little substation helped Reddy Kilowatt “cook your meals, turn the fac-t’ry wheels, . . . wash and dry your clothes, play your ra-di-os.”
All together now:
A TV commercial featuring Reddy Kilowatt:
Just curious…whatever happened to Ashburn’s Ice Cream? The firm was founded in Denison, TX in the late 1800’s by the Ashburns and by the 1970’s had outlets in many places. Then they seemed to close and disappear one by one. Their Hawaiian Delight flavor was legendary and a fond memory from my childhood when I visited relatives in Denison. Old buildings not periodically repurposed soon become vulnerable to demolition.
When I went to D. McRae Elementary in the late 1950s, our Miss Ashburn was of that family, and I grew up assuming that the Poly shop was the only one. Another small retail chain that apparently was North Texas only was Mott’s 5-10-25 Cent stores. The TWU bookstore next to that Ashburn’s was a Mott’s. Last one I saw still open was in Grandview. And it’s gone now.